Parallax
by Momo Cicerone
Summary: A series of unrelated [CoAi] drabbles for Coai Discord challenges —[ShinShi] [Shinichi x Shiho] genres and rating vary.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Written for an impromptu 1 word 1 sentence challenge in the CoAi Discord server. Not enough time to think over or edit. All CoAi.

 **Parallax:** The apparent offset of a foreground object against the background when your perspective changes. Astronomers directly calculate the distance to a nearby star by measuring its incredibly small positional changes (its parallax) as Earth orbits the Sun.

 **Warnings:** [Squints] tw: blood

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 **1\. Seek**

And for years to come, he'll seek for speckles of her in the faces of strangers— for a familiar shade of strawberry blonde, or a hint of sarcasm in darker irises; but they'll never be her, and he wonders if the vacancy in his heart will ever be filled again.

 **2\. Past**

She walks past him with a cynical smile, a plan to leave home and his mangled heart in her back pocket.

 **3\. Short**

He's short of words— honestly, he can't tell if this is a practical joke on her part or these are, indeed, Valentine's chocolates.

 **4\. Reflection**

He circles his arms around her waist as he leans down to leave a trail of ticklish kisses along her neck, and she finds it hard to look convincing when she glares back at him through their reflection, her toothbrush awkwardly placed inside her mouth as she fights the urge to smile.

 **5\. Coffee**

"I-I'm sorry," The cute barista stammers, looking slightly panicked as he mistakes her coffee order for the third time that week, "Sorry, you're—" his face suddenly turns bright red for no apparent reason and, looking sideways for a split of a second, sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, both apologetic and mortified, "...You're _awfully_ distracting."

 **6\. Sun**

But flying too close to the sun will melt her wings, and she tells herself that she's much too of a dead star to be craving her own orbit.

 **7\. Breathtaking**

 _Breathtakingly beautiful_ were perhaps the last words Shinichi would use to describe the sight of a girl soaked in somebody else's blood— but there she was, Miyano Shiho walking towards him with a gun in one hand and her FBI badge on the other, a deadly glare on her face as she placed both into his hands and announced, "I'm taking the _month_ off, boss."

 **8\. Movie**

He feels the weight of her head fall into his shoulders half-way through the movie and, smiling softly, presses his side against the top of her strawberry curls.

 **9\. Hands**

The warmth of his hands finds hers through her pockets and take over the tiny space.

 **10\. Laugh**

It's a curious thing, how her laugh seems to compose a symphony at the rhythm of his heartbeat.

 **11\. Stand**

She's grateful that Agase's firm grip is there to support her as she walks down the aisle with shaky knees, and when she sees him standing there by the altar, his hand nervously fixing a perfect red rose on his pocket, she realizes that this is where fairy tales endings truly begin.

 **12\. Horizon**

He draws a line with his finger along the horizon, pointing at an indistinctive spot besides the setting sun, "Then we'll run away again, somewhere they can't find us."

 **13\. Energy**

Ah, she shouldn't have wasted her energy trying to reason with him— now it backfires terribly as she finds herself wrapped in his embrace and too exhausted to ask him to let her go.

 **14\. Hero**

Heroes were meant to save helpless damsels in distress, not ruined them.

 **15\. Vision**

She's a vision of shades of red overlapped— her hair and lips and the color she bleeds, crimson and scarlet mixing with speckles of plum, the color he sees when she's gone.

 **16\. Collect**

But he's not done breaking her heart, and she's not done collecting the broken pieces— after all, what's a heart good for when incomplete like this?

 **17\. Story**

And she wonders why every story and him and her must unequivocally lead to a tragic ending.

 **18\. Leaves**

Auburn leaves crumble at his feet as he runs— _faster, faster_ … she must be here somewhere, alive ( _please be alive!_ ), and he _will_ find her before death does.

 **19\. Target**

And it's extremely suspicious, really— how he conveniently seem to target and have a complete background research of every guy she'd ever shown a slight consideration on dating, ever.

 **20\. Photograph**

He takes his sweet time to trace her face with his eyes and learn her every feature by memory— inch by inch, he imprints the image of her in his mind like a photograph.

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 **A/N:** I'll be smashing some old 1W1S prompts I did in the past and posting in this fic as part of a (unrelated) collection.

 **SHAMELESS PROPAGANDA TIME:**

If you want to join the CoAi server the link is in my profile!

Also I wrote a smut fic last week and yikes me, did you hate it or what cuz like [cricket sounds]


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Today's challenge was writing a **100 word** drabble out of a **1 word** prompt, I hope you enjoy!

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 **Write**

" _Dear Kudo-Kun,"_ Shiho writes on the flower-scented paper, only to scratch the name away and rip off the page. It piles up in the little stash of crumbled paper over the table.

" _Kudo-Kun,"_ No sooner she starts than she scribbles over his name and disposes it.

" _Shin_ —"

 _No, no, no…_

" _Kudo,_ "

Her brows knit together and she tilts her head, chewing on her bottom lip as she admires her nonexistent progress. With a sigh, she lets her pen glide through the roughness of the paper.

" _Don't look for me."_

It's better this way, she tells herself as she signs,

" _Miyano._ "

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 **Listen**

But if _foreve_ r exists, if there's as much as a moment in time that she can freeze and keep safe inside a box, it'd be right now— here, in the middle of darkness, just the two of them in that room while she listens to the quiet sound of his breathing as he sleeps peacefully next to her.

(Thank God he's _here_ , _breathing_. )

With the weight of his arm over hers and his breath dusting her skin on this cold December, she finds little things to regret in life, if every single mistake she made eventually led her to him.

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 **Swim**

She kicks her tail as she propels herself through the dark waters, her eyes fixed upon the only thing she can see— her human, sinking into the pitch black darkness of the ocean while debris of his ship pierce through the sea. _She must save him_. Her hands reach out to grip his arm and, circling her arms around his torso, swims with him towards the surface.

The morning tide washes her scarlet tail as she leans down to caress his face, the tips of her strawberry blonde hair sprawled on the sand.

He breathes.

And thus, so does she.

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 **Simple**

"So that's it?" The strawberry blonde questions, baffled. "As simple as that?"

" _Ah,_ " Shinichi's grin turns into an apologetic half-grimace, swiftly looking away in embarrassment. "Y-Yes?"

Shiho sighs and rolls her eyes. Her research folder lies misplaced at the wrong side of the table.

"Kudo-kun," The scientist says as calmly as she can, the tone one would use to reason with a crazy person. "You can't just _burst_ into my lab—"

"Sorry—"

"...with a ridiculously oversized bouquet of— _what are these even_?"

"Red camellias, there's no way you don't know!"

"And do you even _know_ what they mean?"

"Do _you_?"

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 **Blanket**

Either he's having an extremely, embarrassingly realistic dream or Miyano Shiho is laying stark naked under the blankets— _his_ blankets, of _his_ bed, in _his_ house.

Oh, God. She's going to absolutely _murder_ him when she wakes up!

That is, unless he can come up with a reasonable excuse as per why they ended up in such predicament... but the headache from his hangover prevents him from recalling anything about what happened between his partner and him last night, and he braces himself for certain death as the strawberry blonde beauty stirs between the sheets and slowly opens her eyes.

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 **A/N:** Sorry if I sound rude but if if you aren't gonna review I won't bother posting these here lol. Because It takes time to format and sometimes it ain't worth the hassle.

Many thanks to the people who **did** review tho, I'm love u altho I suck at replying reviews, please forgive me and thank you for your support :'3


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Fishing some entries we did in coai discord back this summer, some of them got lost in the chat and I'm decidedly too lazy to look for them /whoops. Some of these are absolute garbage because they are like 10 minutes prompts and like who the hell has that kind of imagination (not me)? I did some minor editings, aheh.

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 **1 Sentence prompts** :

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 **Angry**

Saying she's angry in an understatement — she's furious, and when the young detective arrives at the doorstep with a rushed bouquet of almost-wilting roses and a lame excuse on his all-too-sweet smile, she accepts the flowers just to smack him in the head with them before she slams the door in his face.

 **Legend**

"So, finally..." The boy chuckles, eyeing at her face with utmost curiosity as his lips curled into a cheeky smile, "Miyano Shiho, I was starting to believe you were just an urban legend."

 **Dreams**

And it's right here right now that he realizes — as always, too late— that Miyano Shiho is what all his dreams are made of.

 **Comfort**

His hands seeks for the comfort of her warm skin, gliding along the curve of her back as he caresses the goosebumps raising under his fingertips.

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 **Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:**

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 _._

 _[ **Hanker Sore:** adj. finding a person so attractive it actually kinda pisses you off.]_

"If you have something to say, just say it."

The strawberry blonde glares at the boy from the seat right next to him, her head tilted and eyebrows raised in a defiant manner. Caught off guard, he almost flinches off his chair in embarrassment.

"What— ?"

"You've been glaring at me for a grand fifteen minutes." The girl says, scrutinizing his expression before saying mockingly, "Is there something in my face?"

Shinichi feels the heat crawling up his face as his cheeks turn a bright shade of red. Shit. So she noticed. Of course she noticed!

He scrambles, avoiding her gaze and pretending to rearrange the already tidy the textbooks over his desk, "First of all, our break has only been on for eight minutes!" He retorts, and immediately curses himself for his stupidity. She makes an incredulous face, her damn flawless red hair framing her porcelain face like a picture. Propping on her elbow, she lets her chin rest in her palm as she looks at him with curiosity. The young detective chokes on air, because curse those soul-snatching green eyes! He purses his lips in frustration, "And yes!" He blurts, feeling like an absolute moron when she looks at him like that, "You've got—your face, it's—!" He stutters like a damn schoolboy with a massive crush (which admittedly, he is. But there's no way in hell he's going to let her know that!), "Your face is stupid!"

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 _[ **Dead Reckoning** : n. to find yourself bothered by someone's death more than you would have expected, as if you assumed they would always be part of the landscape, like a lighthouse you could pass by for years until the night it suddenly goes dark, leaving you with one less landmark to navigate by—still able to find your bearings, but feeling all that much more adrift.]_

It feels like a never-ending game.

Every day I wake up to the silence of nothingness, to your absence in this world. I wake up to white noises and empty conversations, to an universe so far away from you that the echoes of your existence seem more like a dream.

(Were you just a dream?)

You leave and my world crumbles without you, one piece at a time. There is no light and there is no darkness, no hope or despair. There's only numbness, and I'm trapped on a loop, a chapter that I keep replaying over and over.

I wake up in this strange world, where passages of you and I are long gone and forgotten, but where I hold to your memory just to keep me alive.

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 _[ **Gnossienne** : n. a moment of awareness that someone you've known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that you've never fully explored—an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you, because ultimately neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand.]_

"Haibara! " The boy shouts, hurrying behind her. She can hear his footsteps right behind, almost catching up, but the girl doesn't slow down. "Dammit, Haibara! I'm talking to you— stop walking!"

He catches her elbow, and she yanks away. Shinichi throws his hands in the air.

"What the hell, Haibara?" The fuming detective gestures, a bit out of breath, "What was that, just now? Have you lost your mind?"

"Leave me alone, Kudo."

"You almost killed that man." He says, voice grave and stern expression, "What were you thinking?"

There's a prolonged silence between them.

"Well," the girl says derisively before turning around to walk to away, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

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 **100 words** prompts

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 **Toys**

He toys with the hem of his shirt, gaze low and brows creased into a frown. A shade of bright red flushes all over his face, ending right where neck meets shoulder. It's clear to her that whatever he's about to say, he's hesitating.

The flowers, too, hardly go unnoticed.

How could they? The bouquet is nothing short of giganormous, and the way he holds it against his chest with a sheepish smile and fidgeting fingers makes her wonder.

"So," Shiho starts, a cocking brow that helps her finish her question.

"Uh— Here, for you!" He awkwardly stammers, "Happy Birthday!"

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 **Riddle**

It's a game, you see— a riddle of some sort, and she likes leaving a trail of clues at her wake, she likes telling herself that it doesn't matter who's going to pick them.

But he does, either to her chagrin or amusement. He obsesses over her every spoken word and grows irrationally fond of her peculiar antics. And between half-truths and barely-lies, the young detective finds a way to squeeze into her heart. He stakes his claim on it, no permissions asked, and waits for her to come around.

One day she'll find him. He's not afraid of waiting.

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 **150 words prompts**

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 **Horse**

"Then what are you gonna do, huh, Kudo?" Shinichi opens his mouth to retort, but cuts him short. Shaking her head in disbelief, the strawberry blonde lets out a humorless snort. "No, please, don't tell me, I beg you."

"Haibara, I—"

"You can't just do this every time!" She protests, shoulders rolling back in frustration. Her face is pink with anger, hair wild. And Shinichi would honestly laugh if it wasn't for the fact that she seemed at the verge of stabbing him to death with a plastic spoon."You can't just crash into my life like this —after not even bothering to message me for months— and decide that you suddenly want to be a part of it! My life is perfectly fine without you, thank you very much. And even if it wasn't —I'm not yours to save. So you can ride your white horse right back to where you came from."

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 **Spin**

And even when the chances of them meeting again right there right now were equivalent to spinning a roulette wheel and landing on jackpot, there was no possible mistake this time: Kudo Shinichi was standing right in front of her.

"Shiho—" The boy breathes, and it's evident in his features that he too is taken aback by this chance encounter. After all, what are the odds of long lost lovers meeting like this in a strange country? Wasn't that kind of old school cliché reserved for romance movies? But the vision of Miyano Shiho on that vibrant sunflower dress against the Mediterranean sea, staring back at him as if she'd been misplaced in time, feels a little too familiar to be an illusion, and he sprints —yes, he sprints with his ridiculously large suitcase in hand, the flapping of his blazer a reminder that he's too overdressed for the occasion, and a six-hour-jet-lag pounding in his head — off where she stands, reclined on that balcony under the summer sky.

"It really is you."

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 **Health**

This can't possibly be good for his health —no way, but… oh, does it feel nice.

She's sitting on his lap, her slender legs straddling his waist as her hands roam his hair, pulling the raven strands between her fingers when he bites into the pale skin of her neck. Their chests tightly pressed together as they grind with languid movements, lips finding each other between gasps and whispered names.

The strawberry blonde pulls apart, hands still on his nape, lips swollen from kissing. A pair of jade green eyes gleam in the dimming light, and when she leans down to whisper softly forbidden words into his ear, his heart jolts out in a frenzy.

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 **Mystery**

"I think I know." He tells her at lunch break, his smile a little too proud for her to be forgiving. The young detective leans forward into her desk and locks his cobalt eyes with hers, scrutinizing her reaction, "They are for Higo, right? The chocolates you brought today. Are you planning on waiting for him after practise?" He chuckles in disbelief, to her utter embarrassment —second hand embarrassment, at that!— and throws her a pitiful look. She feels like throwing her pink pencil case at his face (but it's fusae, and he's way below that right now), "I told you, he's not into little girls, you know? It's not gonna happen."

Instead, he sighs in utter frustration and wonders how of all the mysteries the Great Detective has solved in his life, her feelings for him still remain unresolved.

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 **A/N:** Reviews are extremely appreciated.


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